Mayfair Casino Found Guilty Of Racial Discrimination

Crown London Aspinalls have been found guilty of racially discriminating against one of its casino staff by an employment tribunal.

Semhar Tesfagiorgis sued the casino over an incident back in 2019 when her and another black colleague were prevented to deal on a table as the VIP gambling playing only wanted “females with fair skin”.

The casinos defence centred on the argument that they were only trying to accommodate their VIP gamblers request no matter how unreasonable in order to “further the interests of the business.” However this was rejected by the three-person panel on the employment tribunal.

In making the judgement, the panel said: “Our finding is that the claimant and her black female colleagues were held back from going on duty because they were not ‘fair-skinned, female dealers’ or ‘western looking female staff’ …

“The accommodation of the request was direct race discrimination of the claimant because but for her race she would have been asked to deal to the patron. The granting of that request was less favourable treatment by the managers because of race.”

Another complaint dating back to 2015 by Tesfagiorgis again that the casino refused her to swap a shift because they did not want to have her dealing to a gambler that only wanted fair skinned dealers would have been found in her favour but the claim was did not make the deadline for such complaints to be made.

In that finding the panel said: “The shift swap was refused because of the claimant’s race, she did not fit the patron’s requirement for ‘white female dealers only’ which the respondent accommodated. The reason the claimant was not one of the patron’s preferred dealers is because she was not white. The refusal of the shift swap was less favourable treatment of the claimant because of her race.”

Tesfagiorgis who worked at the club from 2017 to 2020 said on the findings: “I tried for many years to open a dialogue about the racism myself and many others were often faced with but I was either shut down, ignored or gaslighted each time.

“The direct discrimination myself and other black colleagues received was not an isolated incident. Although the tribunal could not rule on past events due to time limits, they have acknowledged this was the case and for once Crown Aspinalls will finally be forced to do the same, for this I am grateful to the employment tribunal.”